The townsfolk’s cheers were almost loud enough to drown out the roars of the oncoming monsters. Hajime could feel Aiko glaring angrily at him, while David remarked “What do you know, the brat gets it after all.” He ignored them all and returned Schlagen to his Treasure Trove, pulling out two massive gatling guns, Metzeleis, in its place. Then, he put one on each shoulder and stepped forward.
To his right was Yue, and to his left, Shea. For this fight, he’d lent her his rocket launcher, Orkan. To Shea’s left was Tio, who was still enamored by the ring Hajime had given her.
The army hadn’t slowed at all when Hajime had shot down the pteranodons, and it was closing in rapidly. Four people stood against an onslaught of sixty thousand— It was so ludicrous that it didn’t seem real.
Hajime glanced over at Yue. She looked up at him and nodded. He then turned to Shea. She too, nodded confidently, her bunny ears standing at attention. Finally, he... ignored Tio.
A faint smile played on his lips as he stared at the oncoming horde. He then casually spoke the words that marked the beginning of a grand slaughter.
“Let’s get to it, then.”
What the fuck... What the fuck is going on!? The black-robed boy, Yukitoshi Shimizu, huddled in the far back of the monster army. He’d hurriedly dug himself a makeshift trench and hidden behind as many defensive barriers as he could muster. The earlier annihilation of his pteranodons and the current rout of his army had left him cowering in fear.
True, the sudden shock had left him speechless, but he was still cursing profusely in his mind.
As Aiko had suspected, the mastermind behind this monster army was indeed her missing student.
Thanks to a chance encounter he’d had in the mountains, he’d made a promise to wipe out the city of Ur, along with Aiko and her guards. However, what should have been an easy victory had quickly turned into a veritable hellscape. Even now, his massive army was being torn apart like it was nothing.
Tatatatatata! Tatatatatatatatatata! Innumerable red streaks dyed the sky crimson, each one heralding a death sentence for one of his monsters. Each lance of light pulverized another monster, regardless of its strength, race, or abilities. Without even an opportunity to resist, his army was quickly being reduced to a mountain of corpses. Hajime’s guns fired twelve thousand rounds every minute, making him the very incarnation of death. Worse, every bullet packed such a huge punch that it pierced through enemy lines, killing dozens.
The pierced monsters were hit so hard that they ignored the laws of motion. Instead of being blown back, they just exploded into chunks of flesh. The monsters fled wildly in every direction, scrambling to get out of the line of fire, but Hajime simply fanned his two Metzeleis out in either direction, letting none escape.
The barrage was so fierce that Hajime was more like a mobile fortress than a person, and none of the monsters could even get close. They died by the hundreds, leaving behind heaping mountains of dismembered flesh from which rivers of blood flowed.
To his left, Shea was pulling Orkan’s trigger as fast as its mechanisms would allow, firing missile after missile into the horde. Each missile impacted with an explosion dozens of meters wide, obliterating anything in its vicinity. Those in the center of the blast were blown to smithereens instantly, while those unlucky enough to only catch the shockwave had their bones shattered and their organs crushed, leaving them writhing in pain. Those behind them trampled the wounded to death in their mindless rush forward.
Once she ran out of bullets, Shea swapped out with a new launcher from the pile Hajime had left for her and continued blasting. The missiles fired from this one worked like napalm, exploding over the monsters’ heads and spraying burning hot flames over the hapless beasts. Like his incendiary grenades, the missiles were packed with tar extracted from flamrock. The very same one that burned at over 3000 degrees Celsius. Hellfire rained down on the monsters, searing them until only ashes remained. And as the screaming monsters flailed about in the moments before their death, they spread the flames to their neighbors, creating a chain reaction. The monsters in Shea’s area had one of two choices... be blown to pieces or burned to ash.
To Shea’s left, Tio was wreaking havoc as well. From her hands she emitted black beams of light so hot they scorched the air they passed through. It was the same breath she’d fired on Hajime in her dragon form. It seemed she could use it in human form as well. Flames powerful enough to test even Hajime’s best defenses ripped through the army, burning straight through rows of enemies.
Tio gradually swept her arms from side to side, mowing down large swathes of monsters with her black barrage. When it finally stopped, the only things that remained were deep gouges cut into the earth. However, that single attack had drained her mana considerably. Tio tottered back and forth, her shoulders heaving. But with a single kiss of Hajime’s ring, her reserves were replenished, and she straightened up once more.
She’d pulled mana out of the ring Hajime had given her. With a majority of her section already wiped out, Tio decided to forgo the breath and stuck to spells that consumed relatively less mana.
“Rise up, O furious gale, imbued with the crimson inferno of hell itself— Purgatory Blaze!” In order to keep her mana consumption even lower, she went out of her way to say the chant. A fiery whirlwind appeared in front of her. It was easily big enough to rank F4 on the Fujita Tornado Scale.
It was dozens of meters wide, and as it advanced it pulled nearby monsters into its whirling tempest. One after another, monsters were pulled into the rotating inferno of death. They were only freed after they’d been reduced to ash in the crimson furnace, and thousands of monsters’ worth of ashes sprinkled to the ground like gray snow. Tio didn’t stop until the ground was blanketed in soot.
To Hajime’s right, Yue’s extermination campaign was even more gruesome. When Hajime and the others had started, Yue had still had her eyes closed. Sensing that the right wing was safe, the monsters had all crowded in that direction to begin their assault. They were packed so close together that it was impeding their charge. Finally, when they’d closed the distance to within 500 meters of Yue, she opened her eyes. She muttered a single word. Despite her voice barely being over a whisper, it reverberated across the battlefield.
“Asura.” That was the trigger for her spell. A spell that incorporated the gravity magic she had inherited from Miledi Reisen, powerful enough to influence the laws of the universe. It was such a difficult spell to master that even Yue, a vampire princess gifted with godlike talent in all areas of magic, needed time to build up the mana to cast it.
A sphere of darkness appeared above the monsters, similar to the one she’d summoned when fighting Tio. However, unlike that sphere, this one started morphing. It stretched and stretched until it surrounded a section of the monster army on all sides. Then, once it had blocked out the sunlight and trapped the monsters, it fell.
The simplest way to explain what happened next was that the monsters, and the ground they were standing on, just vanished. To the people of Ur, who were watching the battle from the safety of the city, that was certainly what it looked like.
What had actually happened wasn’t much more complicated than that. The pitch black blanket had fallen atop the monsters, crushing them under an immense weight that had created a crater ten meters deep.
Without even a chance to comprehend what had happened, the army of monsters had been flattened like pancakes. All that remained was a compressed pile of bodies in the crater below. In a single stroke, Yue had slaughtered two thousand monsters. Those unlucky enough to have been caught on the edge of the dome had had their bodies bisected, entrails and organs spilling from the remaining half of their bodies.
Because of the crater’s sudden appearance, the monsters charging in from behind didn’t have time to maneuver, and fell in rank after rank. The charge didn’t halt immediately, and monsters continued falling in for a good few seconds after that. Within seconds the hole was filled with thousands of monste
rs, and Yue drew on her ring for mana, casting another gravity spell. And so, the first batch of corpses were joined by a second layer of crushed bodies.
The air was thick with the metallic, cloying scent of monster blood. The wind carried it over to the town, causing a number of people to start throwing up. But still, they couldn’t take their eyes from the overwhelming might Hajime and his party displayed. Cheers of triumph rang out across the town.
David and his knights were staring dumbfounded as they watched the carnage unfold. Yuka, Atsushi, and the other students felt conflicted when they realized just how big the gap was between their power and Hajime’s.
At first they’d been pumped to help him defend the town, but they soon realized they were just like the townspeople, simply being protected. And by the same kid who they’d all bullied for being “worthless.” There were a lot of complicated feelings bottled up there.
Aiko was simply praying. For Hajime and his friends’ safety. At the same time, she finally realized the full implications of what she’d suggested. Seeing the merciless slaughter before her, it felt like her naive heart was being pummeled by a sledgehammer of all the contradictions she’d averted her gaze from.
Around the time the horde of monsters had thinned enough that people could see the northern horizon between gaps in their lines, Tio collapsed. She’d used up all of her own mana, along with the mana stored in the ring Hajime had given her.
“Ngh, it seems this is as far as I go. My apologies... I cannot muster a single fireball more.” Tio fell to the ground face-down, but mustered all of her strength to look up at Hajime. Her face was deathly pale as she apologized. It was obvious she’d used up everything she had.
“...That’s good enough. For a pervert, you’re pretty strong. Leave the rest to us and rest.”
“You’re so kind, Master... I was certain you would insult me, and yet... Though, sprinkling a few compliments in between insults is certainly enticing... Can I expect even harsher treatment from now on?”
“Go to sleep and never wake up.” Tio’s exhausted body tingled with excitement. Despite being white as a sheet, her expression was ecstatic. Hajime shook his head in disgust, then turned back to the hugely diminished swarm of monsters.
There couldn’t have been more than eight to nine thousand left. The army had been well and truly decimated.
And yet, the monsters continued charging mindlessly. Or rather, a portion of the monsters were still mindlessly commanding the remnants to charge. Most of the monsters had completely lost the will to fight, but they still dutifully followed their leaders’ orders to charge. It had taken their numbers to be thinned this much for Hajime to notice.
In her initial explanation, Tio had speculated that the robed boy had only brainwashed the leaders of each monster race’s respective tribes, and had them control their clans. From the looks of it, her hypothesis had been correct. That was a very efficient way of gathering troops.
Even someone with overpowered skills like Yukitoshi, who had been able to brainwash a dragonman like Tio, wouldn’t have been able to gather so many monsters in such a short time. That meant the fastest way to bring this to an end was to simply cut down all of the leaders, whose movements had already been dulled by the fact that they were brainwashed. With their commanders gone, the monsters would return to following their instincts and flee in the face of Hajime’s devastating might.
Hajime looked down at his two Metzeleis. Both of them were smoking from the barrel. It was clear the cooling system was starting to fail. If he pushed them any harder, they’d overheat. They were more or less at their limit.
Of course he could always repair them later, but as complex as their machinery was, it would take time. It wasn’t exactly something he could do on the spot. It seemed smarter to just change tactics and weapons.
“Yue, how much mana do you have left?”
“...Mmm, about two rings worth. Gravity magic takes more than I thought. I need more practice.”
“You already took down 20 thousand on your own, I’d say you’re doing pretty well. I’m gonna try and pinpoint specific targets from now on, so just back me up.”
“Okay.” Yue managed to grasp the entire situation from Hajime’s brief explanation and nodded. They really were perfectly in sync. Satisfied, Hajime turned to Shea.
“Shea, can you tell them apart?”
“Yep. There’s the controlled ones that feel like Tio did, and then the scaredy-cat ones, right?”
“Scaredy... Yeah, pretty much that. The controlled ones are probably the leaders of each unit. If we can just get those, the rest of the monsters’ll flee.”
“Oh, good. I was starting to run out of bullets, so I wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer anyway!”
“Y-Yeah... Is it just me, or have you gotten a lot more fierce recently?”
“Of course I have. Who do you think I’ve been hanging around all this time?” Shea grinned at Hajime, who smiled somewhat kindly back. But there was no time for sentimentality on the battlefield. Hajime quickly put his Metzeleis back into his Treasure Trove and pulled out Donner and Schlag. At the same time, Shea threw down her Orkan and unslung Drucken.
There were about a hundred leaders left. Their manipulator was probably worried about losing control of the few remaining monsters he had left, so he’d kept them near the back.
With Tio down for the count, and both Hajime and Shea’s heavy weaponry no longer in play, the monsters finally saw their chance. They charged forth with renewed vigor.
In order to open a path for the duo, Yue cast another one of her spells.
“Draconic Thunder.” Dark clouds appeared in what had been a clear sky seconds before, crackling with electricity. Seconds later, a dragon composed of lightning descended from the heavens with a thunderous roar. It swept across the monster army vanguard, its gaping maw vaporizing anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its path. The monsters faltered, their charge broken.
“Let’s go, Shea!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Hajime and Shea dashed through the gap. Hajime sped forward with Supersonic Step, firing Donner and Schlag nonstop. His bullets weaved through waves of monsters, finding the smallest gaps until they arrived at their intended targets, the monsters’ leaders. Each bullet accurately struck a vital point, killing the monsters instantly.
The monsters in the vanguard couldn’t understand why their leaders were dying one after another, so they started to panic. Around the same time, a shadow suddenly appeared above one of the monsters. It looked up, and saw a girl with rabbit ears hurtling toward it, a massive warhammer in her hands.
She used its head as a launchpad, and jumped further into the horde of monsters. Shea repeated that action a few times, skipping from monster to monster, until finally she jumped off the last one with enough force to crush it, and used gravity magic to lighten her body. When she reached the peak of her leap, she multiplied her weight exponentially and dove toward the ground. She was heading straight for where a clump of monster leaders were huddling together. Using the recoil from Drucken’s shotgun blasts to accelerate herself even further, Shea hit the ground at breakneck speed. She transferred all of that kinetic energy into her hammer and swung down.
“Uryaaaaaaaaaa!” Drucken slammed into the ground with the force of a meteorite. The ground trembled, as if an earthquake had just occurred, and massive shockwaves spread out from the point of impact.
The Bulltaur that had been struck directly by the hammer was crushed to a pulp, chunks of its flesh flying in every direction. After a long flight, they fell to the ground. All that awaited them now was a slow decomposition and a return to the earth from which they came. The monsters that had been nearby suffered a similar fate. Nearby rocks and boulders had been sent flying from the force of Drucken’s impact, and they blew through the nearby monsters, shredding them.
Shea hefted Drucken out of the ground and dashed for another group of leaders. Naturally, the monsters weren’t
just going to stay idle and let Shea have her way with them. They crowded around her, hoping to overwhelm her with numbers.
“You’re going to need more than that!” Shea pressed a lever, extending Drucken’s handle by a good meter, and then used Drucken’s shotgun recoil to start spinning like a top. The massive hammer, backed by centrifugal force, sent the monsters flying.
No Bulltaur was spared her wrath. A single dainty-looking girl was knocking monsters around like ping pong balls with a hammer several times her size. It was completely surreal.
Shea completed one full rotation, reset her stance, and started heading to the next group of leaders once more. But before she got very far, her sensitive ears picked up the sound of something rapidly approaching from her right. She calmly swung Drucken around, turning with her swing.
“Grrrrrrrr!”
“Wha—!?”
However, the four-eyed black wolf that had come charging at Shea had predicted her attack and stopped just in time to avoid getting blasted away by Drucken.
Normally, monsters would charge the moment they saw an opening. Shea had expected this wolf to be no different, and so focused her body strengthening on her leg, aiming a kick at the wolf’s head. However, it acted contrary to expectations.
“Huh? Wawawah!” Instead of charging at Shea, the wolf leaped at Drucken, wrapped its powerful jaws around it, and tried to pin it to the ground. Though of course, with how much she’d strengthened her body, a mere wolf’s strength was nothing to Shea. That being said, its movements had been so unexpected that it still succeeded in confusing Shea for a moment, which was all the time it needed. With perfect timing, another wolf leaped at Shea from behind, jaws open wide. Shea quickly undid the body strengthening around her leg, then applied it around her entire body. This way, she’d be ready for the coming attack.
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 3 Page 20
